About my animals and my various crafts (knitting, crochet, machine embroidery, quilting etc) and other ramblings.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

FIVE!

Guess what we have? Go ahead...guess!

There are FIVE of them! Did you guess what they are? From the sounds of them, they sound like a bunch of howler monkies but they are five baby raccoons 5-6 days old. Their eyes and ears are not open. Their little ears are just beginning to flip out from their head and their eyes hopefully will open any time. I've never had 5 at one time so little before. I usually get 1-3 and then further in the season I'll get 1 or two (5 years ago I had 16 babies at one time - but most were a couple of months old and didn't require bottle feeding).

In the mean time, we are back on baby patrol. They are doing great, eating from a nurser well, doing their business well and often and screaming like crazy. So far they only get up once in the night to be fed - usually between midnight and 2 AM and I am on the night shift and early morning shift.

After feeding I rub their head and neck and they pur like kittens. I love that sound! The screaming I could do without. Hopefully once their eyes are open they will settle down a little.

We weren't really prepared for them this year (you know the Big D and all that nonsense) so we scrambled and got together what we could find and made due until Monday when I could go get new nursers and kitten formula. They like the nurser a lot better than the dropper.

Both kids are excited to have babies this year and are a big help in taking care of them. They get the afternoon shift after school and go a great job!